


Righteous Is As Righteous Does

by criminycakes



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Castiel, Angst, Castiel (Supernatural)'s True Form, Dark, Dean in Hell, Dean-Centric, Heavy Angst, Hell, Hell Trauma, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Psychological Torture, Raised You From Perdition, Rescue, Sex Worker Dean, Torture, Tortured Dean, Tortured Dean Winchester, Torturer Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 23:32:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5225384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/criminycakes/pseuds/criminycakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By the time Castiel found Dean, it was too late. Years too late.</p><p>Hell!fic about Dean's time with Alastair, ending with his rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Righteous Is As Righteous Does

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Righteous Is As Righteous Does / Праведник](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8217601) by [la_Distance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_Distance/pseuds/la_Distance)



Dean knew what was coming. He knew it as intimately as he knew the constant stinging pain from twisting his wrists inside Alastair's favorite leather cuffs, the ones lined with ground glass. He associated the question with the metallic tang of his own blood, the feeling of a cut mouth and slick teeth.  
The thinnest knife clanged against the tray and Alastair turned to Dean's naked, broken body. He smiled his predatory smile and Dean's stomach lurched. 'So, Dean, what do you say? Are you ready to get off this rack?'  
Dean swallowed a whimper and steeled himself. He tried to harden his expression, even though he knew his face was puffy and twisted, all blood and torn skin. He knew what he had to say. 'Never,' he croaked.  
Alastair moved so fast Dean didn't even register it until the thinnest knife was past his lips and twisting up into his gums, stabbing into raw nerve where his back teeth used to be. Blood flooded his mouth again. He screamed. He couldn't help it, couldn't stop himself, and Alastair used his other hand to wrench Dean's already broken wrist backwards. Dean kept screaming, air bubbling up from his struggling lungs, and he almost didn't hear Alastair's hiss in his ear. 'Never say never, boy. You're mine until you give in. And we have all the time in the world.'

Blackness came when Alastair left. Even after all this time, Dean wasn't used to it. The floor, walls, everything, disappeared and Dean was left floating in darkness so thick and heavy it felt solid. It was Alastair's punishment for Dean's refusals. Leaving Dean alone in complete silence while his crushed bones ground themselves straight and his flayed skin pieced itself back together. It almost hurt more than the torture. Almost. Sometimes Dean allowed himself to scream until the lack of echo and the feeling of choking on the darkness made him dizzy.  
He was almost certain that the air WAS trying to choke him. Once, after a particularly nasty hunt, John had taken Dean to the dentist to fix his cracked teeth. The assistant held Dean down as the dentist pressed a mold filled with plastic-y goo up onto Dean's teeth. The plastic goop had oozed out of the sides of the mold and slowly, terrifyingly, sludged towards the back of Dean's throat. He had gagged and convulsed and flailed around in the chair until the plastic hardened and the dentist removed it. Afterwards Dean's mouth was raw, his stomach heaving.  
He felt much the same between Alastair's sessions, but it went on for hours.

When he first woke in hell, stretched out on hooks, he was a livewire of fear and pain. He screamed for Sam, he screamed for his father, he screamed to a God he wasn't sure existed. When Alastair first started to tear into Dean with his fingernails, Dean had fought like a wild animal. But as time went on and the pain became a constant, his fight slowly petered out. Even if he did escape, where would he go? There was nothing to escape to except miles and miles of hell. More pain. More fear. Screaming, heat, hordes of demons. Slowly but surely, year by year, Dean stopped fighting. He hung his head, he watched the razors and knives and whips destroy his body and didn't bother wishing for it to stop. Sometimes he even welcomed the pain.

The worst part was the routine. The knowing. The expectation. When the darkness began to recede, when the tendrils of shadow retreated from Dean's healed body, when the room came back into focus, he only had a split second of relief before the key clanged in the lock. He tried to scramble to his feet but his muscles, weak and atrophying, were slow. He was still dragging himself upright when Alastair came in and slammed the heavy door behind him.  
Alastair looked different every time, but Dean always knew it was him. His eyes were snakelike, bitter, grimy. His smile was always the same as he stared at Dean exposed on the floor. Dean had forgotten what wearing clothes felt like. For a long time, he had tried to cover himself. To twist himself away from Alastair's eyes, to cover his nudity with his hands. Alastair had laughed at Dean trying to look fierce while crossing his wrists at his pelvic bone. Now, he had given up. But he kept trying to stand.  
'Rise and shine, sleeping beauty.' Alastair, today a sallow old man with a pointed face and drooping cheekbones, slammed his boot into Dean's ribs, knocking him down again. Dean felt a crack. 'What, no witty comeback?'  
'Fuck you,' Dean spat, and a sharp pain shot through his side.  
'I don't think so, Dean.' Alastair snapped his fingers and was suddenly holding heavy iron manacles. He grinned at Dean, whose skin crawled. 'Tell you what,' Alastair said smugly. 'I'll narrow down the choices for you this time.'  
Dean felt sick. Sometimes Alastair let him pick the theme of the day. He knew there was no point in stalling. One way or another, Alastair always managed to make him choose. Before Dean knew it Alastair's hand had the scruff of his neck in a vice-like grip and he slammed Dean face first into the wall. Dean knew better than to fight. He went limp against the freezing stone blocks of the wall as Alastair locked the manacles around Dean's wrists, then his ankles. Dean shuddered as Alastair pushed himself up against Dean and spoke. 'Fire, Dean, or hallucinations?'  
Dean's mind raced. If he said fire, would Alastair follow through? Or would he go for the hallucinations? Fire Dean could handle, but the visions had nearly broken him last time. Or should Dean bluff and say hallucinations? His mouth went dry in terror. He closed his eyes and moaned with desperation. As time went on in hell he had less and less control over the noises he made. He knew it spurred Alastair on, but he couldn't make his body stay silent. Dean knew Alastair loved seeing him weak, defenseless, forced into choosing the weapon and begging Alastair to hurt him one way to avoid the other.  
'Both it is, then.' Dean had hesitated for too long. His knees gave out and hit the floor. 'You little bitch.' The words were like lashes against the skin of Dean's back. 'You're pathetic. And you know what, Dean?' Dean closed his eyes and tried to tune him out, but the words wormed in through all his defenses. 'Part of you likes it.'  
Dean opened his eyes and stared at Alastair with as much venom as he could muster. 'Shut up.' Hatred surged through him like a forest fire. He felt a little stronger.  
Alastair's eyes glinted maliciously and he grabbed Dean by the neck again, pulled him up and choked the air out of him. He brought Dean's face close to his own, so close that Dean could smell his fetid, sulfurous breath as he said, 'Don't think I don't know all about your truck-stop trysts. I've seen inside you, Dean, and I know everything. I know that deep down, you enjoyed it. And all the appreciation that came after.' His voice dipped, low and mocking. 'All the attention Daddy Dearest never gave you. After all, this, all of this, is tailored to fit you. You can't hide from me, Dean. You can't hide anything.' Dean couldn't breathe, couldn't move, had nowhere to run, nothing to swing at.

_Sam starving, his ribs protruding, Dean's own hunger unbearable. John staring down into a casket, broken and unreachable, Sam so small and still under his gaze. The huge pit in Dean's stomach dug out by blame and guilt. Alone. The cars and motel rooms of strangers. The rope around his wrists, the hands on the back of his neck. Good boy. Loving it and hating himself for loving it. A tiny space, Dean's limbs contorted impossibly to fit. Sam with a huge stick, swinging at Dean, breaking his bones. Dean's mouth made of clay, slow and mutilated. Unable to scream. His teeth sinking into the small body, the hairy, thick flesh, the rat's tail swinging wildly. Sam as a baby, swaddled, black and swollen in the gutter. Mary's blood soaking Dean's hands._  
He lived it all over and over. He knew every detail. There was no suspense, there were no surprises. And no breaks. It repeated in an endless cycle and each time was more painful than the last.

As swathes of chaparral grow, they turn into thorny masses of snarled bark and thorns. In some places the thickets are so dense that they become impenetrable. When the plants reach breaking point, when they are about to strangle one another, they burst into flames. Miles and miles of oil-fueled fire. Everything burns away. The earth smokes and stings. And then, when nothing is left but charred wasteland, hidden burls resprout in the ashes. That was what Alastair did to Dean. He burned everything down. He sliced everything human from Dean like he was skinning a rabbit. He brought Dean's deepest, darkest desires to the surface and then maimed them with Dean's deepest, darkest fears. Again and again until the two became inextricably linked in Dean's mind. Until he felt nothing but disgust and shame and self-loathing. Until he not only acquiesced to the torture but longed for it. Arched forward into Alastair's metal blade just as helplessly as he arched back onto the softer, warmer one. Until he gloried in the feeling of vomiting his own blood. Until he knew for certain that if Alastair magically vanished, he would pick up the tools left behind and carve himself into a new breed of monster without any coercion at all. In the darkness, he no longer screamed. He embraced it. And sometimes, when it didn't hurt enough, he sank his teeth into his arms and ripped them open.

On a day just like any other, as Alastair pressed red-hot coals and salted ice into the backs of Dean's knees, a tiny bitter thought germinated in Dean's mind. Why should anyone be exempt from this? Why should anyone escape the blades and the brands and the humiliation? And then, as quiet as it was clear, the thought bloomed. _I could do it._ Half of Dean was repulsed as decades of moral guidelines tried to hold back the tide. Alastair twisted a pinch of Dean's skin and sliced at it with a razor. Dean's scream somehow swung around into a hacking laugh. He imagined using his teeth to rip out someone's throat. As Alastair gripped Dean's fingers and snapped them backwards, Dean imagined switching places even as he gritted his teeth and heard his own hoarse voice making sandpaper of his throat. Imagined that he was the one cracking someone's bones, making them bleed. It felt so good. Alastair stroked Dean's arm. The softness of it was so foreign against the backdrop of torture that Dean recoiled. Pain exploded in sparks all over his body. 'That's it, Dean. That's it.' 

_'Truth is, you were always a disappointment. I never wanted you. From the time you were little, I could tell you were weak. Stupid. Upside is, you were so much of a nancy boy that you were useful when it came to babysitting. That's the only reason I tolerated you.' ___  
It wasn't real. He refused to raise his head to look at what he knew would be a carbon copy of John.  
_'Sam was always my favorite, and you were only a necessity. You had one job, Dean, just one. Keep my boy safe. And you fucked that up too. I knew you would.'_  
'No,' Dean said, despite himself. 'No, dad, he's safe. He's alive. That's why I'm down here.'  
_'You're the one who got him killed in the first place. You should've watched him better. You should've had his back. YOU let Yellow-Eyes nab him. Just like you let Ruby get her claws into him. You might as well have cut his spinal cord yourself.'_  
Dean winced at the hardness of John's voice, his anger, his disgust. He tried to remember the real John Winchester. The memories weren't there. 'Dad,' he whispered.  
_'All of this is on you, Dean. It's your fault. You deserve this. You might as well embrace it.'_  
And then John's voice softened.  
_'You know that, don't you?'_  
It was the gentleness of his tone that did it. The sound of love, the offering. Longing wrenched at Dean's heart. He couldn't bear to open his eyes against the howling storm of want. He knew that it was an illusion, but the truth of it bit into him and he was powerless. 'Yes.' His voice was barely audible.  
There was a shimmer and John became Alastair. He rested his hand lightly on the back of Dean's neck. The exact spot. 'Good boy.' Relief and gratitude mingled with Dean's horror. He broke.

By the time Castiel found Dean, it was too late. Years too late. Dean was fully focused on the woman beneath him on the rack. He reached down slowly and picked up a needle, smiling slightly at the sound of her terrified shrieks. 'Don't, don't, please, no, no, don't, please,' she repeated over and over, sometimes at the top of her lungs, sometimes as a quiet mantra. Dean wondered briefly what she'd done to end up down here, with him. He smiled sweetly at her and she gulped. His hand stilled. A tiny flicker of hope appeared in her pupils, so Dean stabbed it out with the needle. Her screams filled the room and her body convulsed as clear liquid coursed down her face from her ruined eyes. That was when the rumbling started. Dean looked at the door, then back down at the woman.  
'Don't go anywhere, sweetheart,' he said, and slammed a spike into her hand, pinning it to the rack beneath. The rumbling was louder now, and it shook the dust from between the huge stone blocks of the cell wall. The floor quivered beneath Dean's feet as he cautiously approached the door. And what was that? That faint ringing in Dean's ears? He was still several feet from the door when he heard the crashing. It sounded and felt like an earthquake. The ringing in his ears grew louder and a white light lit up the edges of the door. Hands over his ears, Dean beat a hasty retreat. Not a moment too soon. The door exploded into splinters and blinding light filled the room. Dean stared. The ringing sound was nearly unbearable. The light expanded and enveloped him. As soon as it touched him, Dean trembled. It felt like home. Like fresh air and the sun on his face and joy. Forty years cracked like dried clay and fell away. The ringing stopped and Dean heard – no, felt, resonating through his body - this thought: _It's you._ Wonder filled him. It wasn't his own. He couldn't see, but he felt a hand grab his upper arm, searing it. He blacked out. 

The rest of his memories were fragmented. Hot, ashy wind rushing past his face. Being dragged upwards. The flapping of wings. The howling of hundreds of demons, a black surging mass beneath him. That blinding light, the grip on his arm. The feelings that didn't belong to him coursing through him. Fierce determination, grief, exhaustion, caution, curiosity, hope. Warmth. And one final surge of terrifying faith that felt like love. 

And Dean came to in the dark, the smell of mud and pine welcoming him back. 


End file.
